


Gray

by autumnsolstice9



Series: Colors [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7790233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnsolstice9/pseuds/autumnsolstice9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon’s very first memory is gray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gray

**Author's Note:**

> written for maid_of_stardust, who requested Jon + gray

Jon’s very first memory is gray.

He’s sure there is other relevant information from before this point in his life, but when he tries to see how far back his memory stretches, it always stops here, as if nothing else is important.

He is waiting for his father to return from the Greyjoy Rebellion, secluded in the room Lady Catelyn put him into, and staring out the window. The sky is gray and stormy, and he can’t help but think that it’s a reflection of his own feelings.

He sees Lady Catelyn, holding the newborn babe Jon has yet to see close to her chest, Robb and Sansa close to her sides as she stands awaiting her husband. The beginnings of summer are appearing, and the ground is covered in gray slush that Jon cannot splash in because he is _the bastard_ , someone that Lady Catelyn does not want, someone that is ignored and locked away.

When his father comes riding through the gates of Winterfell, Jon watches from the gray windowsill and wishes he could run to his father, to let the honorable Eddard Stark tell him stories that aren’t black and white- honest stories with questionable morals and conflict, something gray just like him.

Instead, he watches as his father’s black hair is covered by the red of Sansa, Robb, and Lady Catelyn as they hug him, and he feels infinitely small. _Everything here is covered in red. Everything here is Tully, and I’m not even lucky enough to be a trueborn Stark._

When he finally sees his father at the feast welcoming him back to Winterfell, he works up the courage to ask if he can see the new babe. Gray eyes bore into him, apologetic as they always are when his father looks at him, and Ned leads him to where the child is, whispering that her name is Arya.

Jon looks at her, loving the way her dark hair is like his own and curls around her head. She has pale, snow skin- the same as he does- and she opens her mouth in a wide smile when Jon gives her a kiss on her forehead. Her eyes are open and bright, and he sucks in a breath when he sees that they are gray like his own- like his father’s- and feels some of the lonely gray in his chest turn into something else.

_Perhaps gray is not such a bad color_ , he thinks, _if gray is the color of Arya._

***

When he leaves for the Night’s Watch, the gray hilt of the sword Mikken made for Arya feels like a heavy promise in his hands. _I will not forget you,_ it says, _You are my true sister, I love you most._

He finds Arya in her room, packing for her departure to King’s Landing. “Little sister,” he calls, wincing when she runs towards him and wraps her arms around his neck in a tight hug. “I have a present for you before I leave.”

Arya is instantly on him, trying to get the gift. He produces it with a flourish, smiling when her eyes widen, allowing her gray to stand out against the dark hair that is a mess on her head.

She rains kisses on his face, each one of them gray and full of two hearts breaking at the thought of being apart, and Jon can’t bear to go yet, not when he is surrounded in her room of gray that stands for them alone, so he teaches her to stick them with the pointy end.

When he knows he has to leave, that Uncle Benjen won’t wait any longer, the tears that swim in his little sister’s eyes make them look large as the sea, and he thinks he would drown in them if it meant staying with Arya for a moment longer.

He hopes that Arya can hear what Needle says the way he does- he knows she will because they have always been able to read each other’s minds- and how when he leaves the room, the gray hilt is shouting _I love you, I love you, I love you._

_I love you, gray and all._

***

Ygritte is not gray- she is blazing red and all of a sudden his life is full of blue and green and black. She is fierce, she is fury, she is fire. Every fire creates gray smoke, and even though his life is plunged in color that sets his mind reeling, he longs for gray.

Jon looks around the wildling camp and sees a world so different than his own- each person is green or purple or red, and he is still the outsider, still a gray dot in an ocean of color.

When he kisses Ygritte, he tries to tie down the gray smoke to the fire, to burn himself so he is pink and red and no longer a gray that no one but Arya understood, and for a moment he can feel himself start to catch fire.

He is burning and in love because Ygritte, she is beautiful. She is able to bleed color wherever she goes, and Jon is addicted to soaking in it, trying to catch onto her crimson hues and paint over his gray. He is covered in vermillions and ceruleans and marigold yellows, covering his gray so he doesn’t feel so alone.

When Ygritte dies, he feels like he shouldn’t be surprised. He thinks of her fire, and how he latched his smoke onto it, choking out her flame.

He holds her corpse as gray skies cry blue tears, and it washes away at him until Jon is no longer a mix of color. He looks around Castle Black, unable to stand with his brothers covered in black and unable to stand with the wildlings filled with various hues, and is stuck somewhere in the middle, in a mix of gray.

He thinks of Ygritte, and how she made him feel more than gray. With her, he could paint himself into something that wasn’t such a lonely color.

He thinks of Arya, and how she lived in neither black or white, just simple gray like him, and wonders if she ever tried to paint herself until she was unrecognizable.

***

When Jon Snow dies, everything is gray and vast and empty. _It’s the wrong shade,_ he thinks, if that’s what he can call ‘thinking’ in the afterlife. _Everything is the wrong shade; it’s not the color of Arya._

He assumed death would be peaceful, but all he feels is stress because the gray that bathes him isn’t the one he associates with Arya. It’s close, but not her gray, and therefore it’s not perfect. 

He can’t tell if he feels relief or fear at the thought that, even in death, he is still out of reach for his little sister.

***

Jon is resurrected on a gray morning- that’s all there seems to be on the Wall- and there is a red woman above him, but no gray girl from long ago.

He feels as if he can’t breathe, and the gray that seeps into his skin is like the gray he lived in before he had Arya.

It’s cold and lonely like snow-turned-slush during the beginning of spring, and he prays to every god he knows- the old gods, the seven, the Lord of Light- that he thaws completely because he is winter, but Arya, she has always been his warmth in the summer.

***

Sansa comes to him looking broken and in need of help, and Jon could never deny someone aid when they need it. “I want to get Winterfell back,” she whispers, murder in her voice, “I want my home back.”

He has half a mind to tell her no- she cannot have the Night’s Watch fight in this, they take no place in wars for kings and castles- but he remembers that he is no longer a man of the Night’s Watch. He is only gray- empty of color and loyalties.

He remembers the gray walls and floor that he scraped his knees on as a child; there was the gray direwolf that hung over the dining hall where he would joke with Robb, there was the room he was locked in when father would go away and he was alone to feel gray, there was Arya’s room where he gave her gray Needle as a present and symbol of his love for her.

Winterfell was the only place where he was gray and someone saw and loved him regardless of it- it was the only place where someone stood by his side and they shouted at the world that they were gray together. It is where he fell in love without realizing it to a girl who seems to be more ghost than anything at this point in his life.

So he offers to help Sansa retake Winterfell, because maybe Arya will hear and return home. It is wishful thinking and he knows it, but he ignores how the gray clouds cover the stars when he makes his wish for her to return to him.

***

He sees Rickon running towards him, and everything is gray around them. The snow covered ground is turned gray with each step his brother takes, the Bolton bastard’s men are donned in gray cloaks, the wind that races through Jon’s fingers when he reaches towards Rickon is blinding and gray.

The grief that pulses through his veins is gray like the Stark direwolf, and it turns him from man to wolf as he runs across the battlefield, determined to kill every Bolton man in his way. He is blinded by the gray that has been simmering under his skin- a gray that screamed “I am not a Stark” but would overthrow empires to make sure they were safe and never had to feel gray like him- and he fights with all his might.

He leaves Ramsay to Sansa- it is only right she be the one to kill him- and in her feral smile he sees a rage that no longer burns brightly. Her anger and thirst for vengeance has been tempered and has flecks of gray in it, betraying the desperation and loneliness she feels.

Jon Snow never understood Sansa completely, but the gray that has sprinkled itself onto her is something he knows with clarity, and he feels closer to her than he ever has before. When she kills Ramsay and comes to him, telling him that the false Warden of the North is dead, he tries to see the gray in her, but she has returned red and strong and belonging to the world.

Even when he is crowned King in the North, he thinks that he does not truly have a place in the world. The only one who ever glowed gray like him was Arya, and he knows deep inside him that the only spot he truly belongs is by her side. The men in the hall are cheering for him, kneeling to him in a way that makes him feel uncomfortable, and Jon only wants to leave the hall and Winterfell and head to the person who tells him it is okay to be gray.

***

When Jon gathers an army to defeat the White Walkers, he does not expect help from Daenerys Targaryen, the Conqueror and Queen of Westeros. The tension between the North and the rest of Westeros and Jon’s people fight for independence had left Jon worried that Daenerys would ignore his call for help, but she must truly be a queen of the people because she arrives with three dragons and an army, ready to fight.

The White Walkers are chilling blue and white, and as much as Jon despises his singular gray, he would rather be alone with it than facing off against the army, but he is now a king and has always been a warrior, so he charges the wights and fights for those who are living. 

He ends up back to back with another warrior- not his own, they must be from Daenerys’s army- and they work in unison. The fighter is fast and lithe to make up for Jon’s slowness, and his strength cancels out their lighter strikes.

When he turns to thank them for their aid before he heads off to the next pack of Walkers, he is immediately drawn to their eyes, a gray that he has prayed for night after night. He stands there, gaping and trying to find the words to say to Arya, but they are pushed apart by the surge of men racing to fight.

He watches as she heads back into the fray, and he feels like he is glowing. He has searched for her for so long, has worried about her for every day they had been apart, and finally she is there, fighting alongside his army like a warrior queen.

_She is gray, and she is beautiful,_ he thinks, before heading back into the fight.

When it is over and the living have won- not without casualties- he finds her again. Their reunion isn’t full of joyful screams or a long run towards each other, it is gray finding gray and a charcoal hug with tears running down their face.

He holds her hand when they part, kissing the side of her mouth like he has longed to do, and bathes in being with someone who knows what it means to be gray.

She holds Needle in her hand, the gray sword still whispering _I love you, I love you, I love you_ until Arya herself joins in, whispering her love into his chest.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

The words are gray, but gray is the color of him and Arya. He wouldn't want them any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed! I'm doing Sansa + green next! Give me requests if you want


End file.
